You know, I did not realize that Election Day was Nov. 1. I'm so used to it being around the 7th/8th that I forgot about the Monday Halloween implications. Nuts. Now I really need to dig into that voter's pamphlet and read up on the ballot initiatives. :O (Redacted, because Destina reminded me that it's the second Tuesday in November, not the first, despite what I just read online somewhere! Panic abated. For now)

Sunday night, I stumbled across some Bad Lip-Reading video renderings of the first two Presidential debates. I'd seen some of the NFL and college football videos before, where field and sideline comments are remade into things like, "Canadian watermelon boot," and other equally bizarre phrases. The weirdness of Debate #1 as Debate Night! is terrific, but Debate #2 as Presidential Poetry Slam is utter genius. It's the power of misdirection, where with the overlaid words and subtitles, you think, How is he NOT saying 'It was not good in my garden'? It looks exactly like that! The randomness of the 'reinterpretation' works especially well in a poetry slam context—that might as well be what those phrases are. Awesome. :D

During my weekend visiting up North, I learned something I hadn't known before. Apparently, my pathological hatred of grocery shopping is shared by my two sisters and mother. I already knew my mother didn't like to shop—for much of anything—and I'm pretty much the same. But those two sisters? That was news, and the incredible dislike of the grocery store was even more surprising. I thought I was the only one with that issue. For most of our marriage, HalfshellHusband has been the grocery shopper while I did the laundry, because each of us hates the other chore. It turns out that of the four of the women at that gathering, we are all pretty okay with hardware stores (except that Home Depot can be pretty overwhelming), and I also like antique stores for window-shopping. But apart from that? Oh hell, no!

My younger sister also has the 2- to 3- errand limit that I do, which I always thought was a result of my impatience and blood sugar problems. No, apparently it's just that there's a maximum amount of enforced "chore obnoxion" we're willing to tolerate. Once in awhile, I might make it to 4 errands, but that's pretty rare. As you can imagine, I dread Christmas shopping. It combines both the hatred of shopping and of multiple-location errands, AND it throws in repetitive music for the ultimate torture. Ugh. /o\

Things have been busy the past few weeks, with the pre-travel preparations (i.e., the right wedding clothes), doing my healthcare reimbursement paperwork in preparation for next year's estimates, and baking and packaging pity-cookies for our daughter last night. I got Halloween lights up outside on Sunday afternoon, but nothing for the inside yet. Travel really takes a toll on your "getting things done" time. :O

So, we've started watching Band of Brothers. I did not realize that Damien Lewis used to be good-looking, which is pretty rare for red-haired men (in my book). Meanwhile, on The Blacklist, Donald has bleached most of the red out of his hair and Samar has added a bunch to hers. This kind of cross-season disturbance in continuity is always a jolt for me. Elizabeth's weight-loss seems less weird, since the character had a baby just as the actress did, so even the 40-50 pound drop-off is kind of expected. But red hair that becomes sandy blond in a male character? Not so much.

Alright, work beckons. And later, the garage! Because the wind and rain are back again, impinging on my outdoor bicycling... :(

I've only seen a few of the bad lip-reading videos before, but these just cracked me up. Really, imagining the presidential debate as a poetry slam is hilarious on its own, and the pained looks on the moderators' faces is only improved by the idea that they are opening the gates to another... poem. Oh, god, another poem! Please let it be short. :D

I find the grocery in general to be boring. My hub won't use coupons or forgets them. We buy a lot cheaper if I go. Election humor is funny all around no matter who your voting for ( or against! ) LOL.

I think my husband finds the store boring, but he doesn't _hate_ it the way I do. My sister was saying that as a single mother, her daughters would call her on the phone and tell her they were out of milk (or something else), and that she needed to stop by the grocery store, and her internal reaction was always, "But I was just there last week."

I think even if I were almost entirely alone in a grocery store, I would still hate doing it. After about 5-10 minutes, I'm thinking, "God, why is this TAKING so long?"

We were rainless for months, for the most part, and now we're getting excess rain. All of those buckets we're saving from the showers are really only pleasing the cat, though I suppose they could go out to the street sewer system (which flows to the river), rather than being re-sanitized like sewage and gray water.

there's a tiny part of me that actually likes grocery shopping. that tiny part of me also likes wegman's, except the closest wegman's is half an hour away and that is waaaay too far to drive just for fun produce.

i love that your hatred of shopping seems to be genetic, tho. i mean, your mom hates it and apparently passed that hate down to her daughters.

i thought election day was always the first tuesday in november, which means it should be on the 1st this year. except it isn't. I AM CONFUSED. and i still can't believe you have SEVENTEEN ballot intiatives.

I mind stores like Fred Meyer's and Target less, because they have such a variety of stuff there. One-stop shopping, or pretty darn close! But the grocery part of it... ugh. When I was single, I used to sometimes shop during the week, because why ruin a weekend with a trip to the grocery store?

I can't keep the Election Day rule straight anymore, I just know that it once again falls on my nephew's birthday. He's in a "target-rich" part of November for that. :)

I actually like grocery shopping, and not because I work for one :p I like poking through different stores and comparing prices. Ditto going to some place like Walmart or Target, especially if I need something specific.

HOWEVER...

Regular shopping, like going to the mall or clothes shopping? KILL ME NOW. I hate hate HATE window shopping with an utter passion.

I guess early voting here is bigger than I was expecting? It made front page of our regional paper yesterday. I'm a purist, so I'll wait until the second Tuesday.

I hate clothes shopping like burning, mainly because I have an atypical build that most clothes don't fit well. Almost nothing fits, and very little looks good. Hard to get enthusiastic about re-experiencing that!

We don't have early voting in California, other than mail-in ballots. I'm the lone in-person voter in our household, but it may be time to change that...

I don't mind the grocery store so much, but half the time I get my groceries delivered because I don't have a car. I walk to Trader Joe's to get my veggies, though. But I'm with you about errand running -- sometimes I'll borrow a friend's car or rent a car for a day to get errands done and after the first two or three I have had it. So boring.

Happily, most of my family doesn't exchange gifts anymore and all my two college-aged nieces want now is money or gift cards. Easy. Most of my shopping is for my friends and I tend to pick up things for them when I travel. Way more fun than shopping around the holidays.

I love Band of Brothers. Have you ever heard Richard Speight, Jr. talk about his interactions with his character's family? I heard the story the first time at the first SF con and it made me cry.

We are down to mostly giving the grown-ups food treats, which is still a fair amount of shopping and baking. But better than it used to be. I have one sister I give real gifts to (the one who doesn't have children), and that can be tricky-- not because I don't know what to give her, but because I can't find what I want. Some years, nobody is selling it!

I hadn't heard the Richard Speight story. It's eerie to think that, although dramatized, much of the series involves real people, like the guys interviewed at the beginning of each episode. God, what they went through.